Manager of Harvard Medical School morgue busted selling human body parts

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Prosecutors said Cedric Lodge sold these body parts to people he met online, including in Facebook groups. The buyers were collectors or people who then sold or traded the items again. Denise Lodge would ship the body parts and take payments via her PayPal account. At least once, Cedric Lodge invited a buyer into the university morgue, selling the person two dissected faces for $600, records show.

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A Goffstown couple accused of selling body parts stolen from Harvard Medical School have been sentenced to prison.

Cedric and Denise Lodge were both sentenced to prison for selling body parts, including organs, skin and faces, from the Harvard morgue.

Cedric Lodge, 58, is the former manager of the Harvard Medical School morgue. He pleaded guilty to interstate transport of stolen goods and was sentenced to eight years in prison.

Denise Lodge pleaded guilty to selling the remains to buyers across the country. She was sentenced to one year and one day in prison.

According to officials, Cedric Lodge removed human remains from donated cadavers after they had been used for research and teaching purposes, but before they could be disposed of according to the anatomical gift donation agreement between the donor and Harvard Medical School.

Investigators said Cedric Lodge often took the remains to his home in Goffstown. He and Denise Lodge would ship the remains to buyers in other states, including Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, officials said.

Neighbors said that despite what happened, the Lodges seemed like kind people.

"He's a nice man," one neighbor said. "I've never had any trouble with him. I don't think anyone has had any trouble with him. I don't think they've ever had any trouble with the police coming up except when they raided the place originally when it first started."

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Cedric Lodge spent almost three decades working at Harvard Medical School, and his attorney noted his supervisor called him a "pleasure to work with." Yet in 2018, prosecutors said, Lodge started stealing body parts before the bodies were sent for cremation. The scheme was exposed with the arrest of Lodge and others in 2023.

Court documents filed by Denise Lodge claim Cedric told his wife the body parts were medical waste, and posed the sales as an opportunity to shore up the couple's finances as Denise battled breast cancer and stopped working.

Lodge's attorney Patrick Casey indicated that years working in a morgue with cadavers may have desensitized Lodge to the importance of the bodies he was entrusted with.

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